A judge is to see for herself how the US assessed the damage inflicted upon the government by Bradley Manning’s WikiLeaks activities. Manning’s lawyer says the case against the soldier should be dropped as Washington is still withholding evidence.

­The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, has ordered the State Department to release to her official documents assessing how damaging the leak of thousands of US government cables had been to American national interests and security.

Following the ruling, the State Department said it still finds the leak detrimental to the US.

"Our view of the entire WikiLeaks incident has not changed at all in terms of the negative effects. There was enormous turbulence in many of our bilateral relationships when this happened and there have been impacts on individuals," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.